The most wonderful time of the year...Thanksgiving!

I love Thanksgiving! I'm pretty sure it is my favorite holiday. I don't think anything can beat the Thanksgiving celebrations we had with the Mitchell clan when I was a kid. This year was definitely different from that, but still a lot of fun! I guess the saddest part about growing up is that there isn't time/room for all the people that there used to be in life. This year was our turn to have Thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family, but since most of my cousins are grown with their own families now, 2 of my mom's siblings chose to do Thanksgiving with just their kids and grandkids. I'm sure they had a great time, and are starting some great traditions! We did however get to have Thanksgiving with one of my mom's sisters, her husband and 2 of their kids, and don't forget Grandpa! We had a great time! My sister and her husband and baby, my brother and parents topped off the group!

We ate at my house (my parents house) and had some EXCELLENT food. My #1 favorite thing about Thanksgiving is that you are allowed to pig out. You can eat mounds and mounds of food, and no one thinks anything of it, because you are supposed to! You can have 3 different kinds of dessert, with no crazy looks from other people at the table, because they are doing it too!

My cousin decided it would be fun to go to the outlet mall at Park City at midnight for their midnight madness/opening of black friday sales! It turned out to be so much fun!! I bought way too many new clothes, but I just kept finding deals! We got home around 4 in the am and I couldn't keep my eyes open! We were trying to decide where to sleep....i literally would have slept in the hallway, I just wanted to go to bed! We slept in, and then waited until the afternoon time to get out there again.

This was a very fun Thanksgiving....but oh so very different from the Thanksgivings of my past. I feel like I should do a little tribute to my Grandma (she passed away a few months ago) and her Thanksgiving traditions....she probably would have been appalled at the festivities we participated in! Basically...besides the shopping and watching TV and sleeping...there were no festivities!

In the "good old days of yore" we had Thanksgiving days full of festivities. My grandma always wanted my cousins and me to do things together....besides watching tv. Each year at Thanksgiving..or shortly after if it wasn't the Mitchell year...we played Christmas Bingo! The cards were red and green. They had a bunch of Christmas pictures on them and we used red and green M&M's as markers. It was actually Christmas Bing, because there weren't enough pictures to make another column. Grandma collected things throughout the year that we could choose from as prizes when we won...and we had to play until everyone won! The prizes were very random, and there was a wide variety. There was usally some complaining when we were all being forced to participate, but I think everyone always ended up having a good time. Even if the game wasn't fun, it was fun sitting around the tables laughing and joking together!

The other Thanksgiving tradition would be the Christmas craft. It's funny that all of the Thanksgiving traditions have to do with Christmas....but they do! Grandma usually thought up some fun craft for each family, or possilby each kid and grandkid to participate in. They were usually something that turned into a great Christmas decoration! One year, the men started "MAC" or "Men Against Crafts." They would rather participate in football watching than the craft. Can you imagine??

The other tradition that my grandma did at Christmas was giving us each a Christmas ornament. There were quite a few years where she would find a Christmas story that she liked, and each family got a copy of the story or book, and then the ornament would usually coinside with the story. She would also give some other Christmas decorations to each family, and then when the grandkids got older and started moving out, she also made sure that they had their own set of Christmas towels, or other small decorations for their apartments.

I know there was a lot of complaining about some of these things, but I personally miss it. I think my grandma did a wonderful job of letting us know she cared, and of creating some wonderful traditions and memories that we will always have! Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!!